Construction businesses, like most in the service sector,
prosper by selling the expertise of their staff. Capturing and exploiting that
expertise in a way which makes it as useful and, ultimately, saleable as
possible is the promise of knowledge management.
Knowledge management
involves finding the most effective way of getting employees or project team
members to record relevant information and then encouraging others to locate and
use it. The ability of information technology to significantly enhance this
process has led to the boom in business use of knowledge management.
The
benefits of KM are potentially wide ranging:
i) Better services and products
for customers;
ii) Faster generation and application of ideas and
innovations;
iii) Access to industry best practice;
iv) Access to internal
and external networks;
v) Access to competitor and market
intelligence;
vi) Reduced loss of knowledge due to staff turnover.
In
2000 over $2 billion was spent globally on knowledge management. Forecasts
suggest that will have risen to $12.7 billion a year by in 2005.
In the
UK knowledge management’s mainstream acceptance and adoption has been reinforced
with the formation of the British Standards Institute Knowledge Management
Committee,(the construction sector being represented by Arup) and its subsequent
publication of “Knowledge Management- a guide to good practice”. This coupled
with the “Skills for Knowledge Management” report from the Government’s favoured
consultancy, TFPL, and October’s global summit of Chief Knowledge Officers,
which was given the theme of “Knowledge strategies-corporate strategies”,
suggests the stage is set for the broader uptake of knowledge
management.
Creating a knowledge management culture
Many KM
strategies have focused on the introduction of intranets, extranets, project
collaboration tools, content management systems and e-content delivery. However,
using these “in the box” solutions to record and capture explicit knowledge
(data and information) or to codify and capture tacit knowledge (individuals
experiences, skills, values, know-how) is not so simple.
Successful
capture and codification is reliant not only on specifying the right technology
and the implementation of the application itself but also on:
i) identifying
and capturing the information/knowledge that is key to organisational
performance;
ii) structuring this information/knowledge in a way that is
meaningful, useful, retrievable and usable to the user.
To do this
involves immense organisational commitment. Successful knowledge management is
not merely about codification and IT. To identify, capture, structure and share
knowledge successfully there must be a pervasive knowledge culture within the
organisation that enables this to happen.
The identification,
structuring and delivery of the company’s information and knowledge assets can
only be achieved through consultation with the users and suppliers both within
and outside the company. Staff must be willing to identify and share their
information sources, knowledge and experience. Only then will the information
sources, structures and tools be able to reflect the real business needs and
become a true value added business resource.
To succeed a holistic
approach is needed incorporating:
i) executive buy-in;
ii) a KM Strategy
in line with business strategy;
iii) a HR/change management strategy that
rewards knowledge sharing and learning;
iv) detailed information audits,
knowledge audits and skills audits;
v) carefully prepared information
architecture and content management.
Get all this right and Knowledge
Management can transform a business’s potential.
Useful sources of further information:
Knowledge Management - A Guide to Good Practice
“Skills for Knowledge Management”
Knowledge Strategies - Corporate Strategies
Other articles on Knowledge Management in the Construction Sector
and be found in NCE Plus Knowledge Bank
